Local authority to give youth workers app on PlayBook or Torch devices to cut down time spent on paperwork

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Sade Laja
Guardian Professional, Wednesday 21 March 2012 11.26 GMT

Surrey county council is developing an application for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and Torch smartphone to give youth workers mobile access to young people's records.

The app will allow youth workers to update the personal details of young people while on the move and, according to Surrey, the app should save between £75,000 and £100,000 annually by cutting down on the time spent completing paperwork.

In-house IT staff are developing the app, which will be launched in June, as part of a drive to ensure that all 16 to 19-year-olds in the area are in education, training or employment by 2015. The BlackBerry devices and app are expected to be rolled out to around 40 youth workers.

Paul Brocklehurst, head of information technology and management at Surrey county council, told Guardian Government Computing that it decided to make the application compatible with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and Torch smartphone because it seemed to be the most secure technology to transfer sensitive information and was fully GCSx compliant.

"We looked at other technology as well, like iPads and so on, but this seemed like the best option for us due to the security aspect and it being encrypted," he said.

The council's development of the youth workers app follows its creation of a BlackBerry app in 2010 that allows staff to monitor which vehicles are dumping waste at its recycling centres.

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